I looked forward to my morning practice today. I researched Bhairavasana. If I'm going to take pictures of my practice, I have to organize my room more. For that I need a lot of little white boxes from Ikea to put my "cachibaches" into and out of sight. So no photos of my practice for a while.
As my first teacher used to say, sometimes people go to Mysore and study yoga intensely and their bodies are able to do everything in the various series. The experience allows them to advance quickly. Some of us are householders and job holders and can't take that route. Advanced yoga practitioners don't do primary every day. During their week they do intermediate one day, third series another, primary the next, and so forth. During their week they experience a lot of different asanas. A long time practitioner should be able to do the same, despite not having perfected any series, or at least attempt to do so with substitutions. It seems healthier to the bone and muscle structure to give the body a variety of poses during the week, not the same ones over and over until you're sort of "broken in". That "broken in" could result in actually getting broken, in my opinion.
4 comments:
Ramaswami was recommending the very same, as wide a range of asana as possible over the week. He seemed particularly interested in improving blood circulation throughout the body, reaching all areas etc.
Dear Grimmly
Thank you. I'm expressing my opinions based on observations I have made over the year of other's practices and on what is going on in my body. It's good to have some reinforcement.
cheers,
Arturo
Arturo,
Are you sure you want to speak for others' practices? Not to be controversial, but for each person you show me that claims that Primary gives her/him back pain, I can show you fifty for whom it does not. There are many long term practicioners in my shala who do Primary and their backs are fine. In fact, am I wrong in remembering that you were recently practicing Primary and a bunch of Second poses? According to your own theory, shouldn't those backbends counteract the back pain?
Look, I really don't want to upset you since you are such a lovely, sweet person, but it seems to me that you have a bit of a blind spot when it comes to Ashtanga practice.
Why not just say "I'm doing this (sandwich of poses) because that is what I want to do" and just be happy with it? Why keep trying to justify it? Life is too short to have such struggle!
Dear V
Thanks. I have written more offblog to a few others to try to understand other reasons regarding my experience as to why I'm experiencing problems with my back and left leg. But since this is a public forum and there are people in my city reading, including some teachers, I haven't, to keep those
things private.
I'm relating my observations, a one rat experiment. As a sample of one, it is weak. It would be stronger if it was substantiated by a study based on a large sample of people. It's difficult to write about these things in our system because we're told to not question, to just do and accept the directives. Questioning, though, advances science. I offer my thougths as if I was preparing to explain to my family what I was doing. My opinions may be wrong. If a large mass of people start observing similar things, then I was not off track. We are just a small group of yoga practitioners who happen to blog. We don't publish books or give workshops. We just express opinions in this medium.
As we have observed before, there are many great practitioners who just practice. They don't write about what they do. If the practice is not working for them, they do something else. We don't find out about it. One of the
strongest practitioners in my last shala, who I used to call Iron Man, stopped practicing. I eventually caught up with him. He told me he took up swimming. A year later, in an update, he told me he now was a father of a newborn and was practicing just the Surya Namaskars at home. That is his story. He could do all series, but when he practiced in my old shala used to do only Intermediate because he felt he
needed to open his chest and relax the back.
So therefore yes, I want to do a sandwich of poses. I cannot do it at my current shala. I could do it at my previous one. My previous teacher allowed it because she wanted to help me and her stance was less strict. In a few days of doing so, I'm not experiencing problems with either my leg or back.
To simplify my observations further, my back problems may be caused by things way simpler, such as carrying a back pack wearing 40lbs daily and a bag with handles, both with things I need for the practice, including rug, clothes, towels, toiletries and a hot water kettle for a bucket shower afterwards.
hugs
Arturo
Post a Comment